Paul Meakin has been an estate agent in Croydon for more than 30 years.These papers show particularsof some of the properties he helped to sell.

Paul Meakin

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Paul Meakin

Paul talks about the effect of the recession on housing in Croydon:

"I remember being on holiday, I always tended to go away at Christmas and New Year because it was quiet. I remember phoning in from wherever I was on holiday, phoning the four offices and asking, you know, how many sales they'd made in December and the four offices and like twenty members of staff had made six sales [laughs]."

"I remember thinking, 'oh my God', you know and that's how it was, we'd gone from boom one minute to no sales the next.

The recession, I think, lasted seven years from August the 19th 1988, it was a Thursday I think, I'll have to check that. From then right the way through 'til the tail end of 1995."<page/>"I think Croydon was right up at the top of the repossession list

mainly because of the vast area that it covers."

"South Norwood, Thornton Heath, a huge amount of conversion flats and of course it was the flat market as such that got hit the hardest. It's that much easier for a family with two children expecting a third child to live in a three bed semi, than it is to have three kids in a two bed flat, or one child in a one bed flat so I think people in houses fared slightly better in terms of being able to hang in there."

'Negative Equity'

The British economy boomed in the late 1980s.People were encouragedto buy their own homesand mortgage companies were happy to lend.In the early 1990s there was a severe economic recession.Housing prices crashed.Many found themselvesin 'negative equity', when their mortgage was higher than the value of their house.

If they were unable to keep up repayments on their mortgages,their houses were repossessed.In 1991, more than 75,000 homes were repossessed.London and the South East, including Croydon, were particularly badly hit.

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